


Know it better

by blueberry



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-17
Updated: 2013-08-17
Packaged: 2017-12-23 18:30:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/929695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueberry/pseuds/blueberry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aravis gives Lasaraleen her first sight of ten old scars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Know it better

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Morgan (duckwhatduck)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/duckwhatduck/gifts).



_I need a friend._

The letter would take weeks to reach Archenland. Would that be soon enough? Would Aravis decide to come at all? Lasaraleen had not put anything out of the ordinary in it - mostly its message was composed of a confession of loneliness and her honest belief that it might do Aravis some good to see again the country of her birth. Anything more might have attracted suspicion if the letter were intercepted.

She had only received two letters from Aravis herself in the years since Aravis had run from her engagement, but from what she remembered of her friend it would have taken much for her to allow herself to acknowledge any part of what she'd been determined to leave behind - that young girl so proud and unbending she would put to shame any renowned general of many wars. And even if she was only copying the generals she had heard of, and her father and elder brother, she'd been awfully good at it.

Besides, the second letter had been a brief and awkward thank you for the gifts Lasaraleen had sent with her reply to Aravis's first letter, even the vial of desert sand Lasaraleen had included and thought would be called dreadful sentimentality. Some part of Aravis must miss Calormen, and might even miss her.

The reply came a little more than a month later, and said that Aravis would soon follow.

That young girl, Lasaraleen thought again, with the dark eyes and narrow face. They'd last seen each other more than ten years ago, now, and who could say how Aravis had changed? The story in her letter had been incredible, telling of the rest of her flight to the North. She had seemed the stalwart young warrior she'd always wanted to be - all those years ago.

Lasaraleen certainly had changed herself, she thought. Once she would not have been so gloomy when knowing an old friend would visit. She went to tell her husband the news, and he did put it in a positive light - in his own way - neither of them had been killed yet, so if Aravis was coming to be a bodyguard, there would be a job for her to do. And she had told him that he was old and ridiculous, and he had told her that she was entirely too young and ridiculous; but somehow that did cheer her up. 

She had stopped a sword and a dagger in Aravis's hands nearly as soon as they were in private chambers.

Aravis's hands had taken to them as readily as she had hoped.

"Darling," she said, entreating and low-voiced. "I do need a friend. I need someone I can trust; someone honourable. My husband has enemies, and they've got a strong enough position now that it means I have enemies too. And you always did have such a preoccupation with weapons and hunting, and fighting and things, Aravis, and - I ask you to consider the debt you incurred when I helped you to escape Tashbaan. I don't hold you to it to honour now, but oh, Aravis, I beg you to consider it."

Her old friend's eyes were as wide and entreating as her own, though she stood there holding the weapons with a firm grip. " _Honestly_ , Las. Debt, and honour, and - you're expecting me to keep you safe? _You_ really think _I_ can do that?"

* * *

"You are quite, quite ridiculous." Daylight came in from high windows in the smallest private bath within Lasaraleen's estate. Aravis sat tense a moment, glanced up at the light, and finally took her tunic off.

If Aravis had not told Lasaraleen similar things since they had met, and if Lasaraleen had not often thought similar things of her (and still did), the statement might have been something to be offended about. She had, in fact, said it often on the day they'd met again and she'd agreed to become a bodyguard for a few months, as Lasaraleen's husband slowly and surely put himself to the task of securing more favours, and thus more safety. Besides, she was still busy looking at Aravis's scars.

Up to now, Aravis had mostly undressed in the dark - there had been some candlelit and daytime dalliances at the beginning, Lasaraleen well remembered - and later, only in the dark. Pleasant as that was, Lasaraleen had started to notice that she was being pushed away whenever there was real light to see by, and that she had not yet seen all of Aravis at once.

"Oh, darling, they're _awful_. They must have hurt terribly!" she said.

"They were made more than ten years ago! I've got worse ones since I started staying here."

"But we could treat those almost right away," Lasaraleen murmured, still staring. It was clear that the scars no longer hurt - unless perhaps Aravis was like one of the talkative veterans at parties, and would complain of feeling pain when it was cold and claim to know when rain would come by twinges in her old wounds. The marks were ten long, pale stripes of which only three or so puckered the skin in short stretches, where the claws must have caught the deepest. Lasaraleen, kneeling behind Aravis, winced over and over as she touched them.

"I'm imagining how it happened," she announced and wrapped her arms around Aravis.

"Oh, don't. Don't." Aravis's shoulders shivered underneath her, then gave a more conscious wriggle away. Any further and she might go right into the sunken bath, rather than only dangling her feet over the side. "Las."

"No one will come in. My orders were strict, and on top of that my husband has also left strict orders that the servants listen to me."

"I know that. I heard you," Aravis muttered. "And I've got quite used to your husband and his strange ideas about being lenient."

She sat back and chewed her lip, regarding Aravis's bared back. There were not only the scars to consider, and not only how pretty she found that it was narrow, and such a long stretch of pale brown, had its own sweetly natural dark spots and flecks, and somehow the angles of the shoulder blades looked elegant. Aravis was also sitting hunched over and picking at the hem of the tunic in her lap, though she was a great one for trying to always show her stern and impervious pride. 

She _had_ always told Aravis that there was every chance she might end up scarred and bruised and much less pretty, with the violent and strenuous things she liked to do. Other people might find her less pretty, at any rate - Lasaraleen had to admit that she did not. It was just as well, since she was asking Aravis to continue putting herself in a position to get scarred or worse.

"I feel I must take care of it, darling. Even if I wasn't there when you were hurt, I feel like I should make up for it a little. And here we are with all these bath oils," she said, raising her voice a little as it looked as if Aravis would protest, "and I'm sure no one has touched your back since you received these scars!"

Aravis's motions of protest stopped immediately and she went suspiciously acquiescent.

"Oh," Lasaraleen said, deflating. "You've showed them to others? You seemed shy of it."

At this Aravis turned and finally looked at her again, smiling a little. "I haven't shown _many_ others. I don't go around half-naked as a rule, even in the barbarian North."

"I haven't called it that in forever," she said reproachfully.

"Yes, Las, I know. I might be laughing a little at what _I_ used to think, too. As for the scars..." Her hands played in the tunic on her lap again. "Cor already knew about them. And a few times, a few years ago he had the opportunity to see..."

"Oh, Prince Cor. I might have thought." It was a bit of a relief - at least it made _sense_. She didn't bother to ask much about the relationship between Aravis and Cor. They had been heroes together and close friends beyond that, and she knew that they might have been something other than friends, too. It wasn't something she wanted to think much about, but it was a closeness of a kind that didn't interfere with the relationship between Aravis and herself.

"Well?" said Lasaraleen, reaching towards the raised ledge where they'd left some clothing and ornaments, Aravis's sword and dagger, and a tray with stoppered bottles of scented oils. "Shall we start, then?"

"It _isn't_ as if I've had many people rub my back, is it?" Aravis said, and turned and tucked her hair out of the way.

Lasaraleen did not kneel behind her this time, but sat with a leg on either side of Aravis. They both wore robes around their waists while they sat on the marbled sides of the sunken bath, but still, it gave her a good tingle of anticipation for the evening to spread her legs. She ran her hands up and down the scars and all the other qualities on Aravis's warm skin, and every so often kissed her nape or a bump of her spine. Aravis murmured noises rather like a pleased cat.

"How exactly did it happen? Tell me the whole thing," Lasaraleen said, and all her good work seemed for naught. The next noise Aravis made was decidedly not pleased, and she sank her head into one hand.

"I _should_ tell you that. Oh, if I wasn't going to, I wouldn't have decided to show you this in the first place." She looked back up at Lasaraleen. "Do you ever do things, but still manage to surprise yourself with what terrible ideas they are?"

"Other people have terrible ideas," Lasaraleen said. "I try and duck underneath the ideas, or perhaps to help with them."

It got her a quick, bright grin. "Oh, of course, Las. Other people."

Aravis moved to sit beside her but did not take the traditional storyteller's pose, perhaps because it was a tale that Lasaraleen mostly already knew. She filled in quick details: the servant that had been punished because of her and without her sparing a thought to it; the infamous Great Lion itself punishing her for that little bit of unfairness; the place where the hurt had been healed (thank goodness, thought Lasaraleen), though the scars remained.

"And I sit here, in your oddly lenient and hospitable husband's home, having promised to lend you protection against your enemies, and the scars are giving me the reminder that they were made to. I haven't thought about them in ages," Aravis confessed, shaking the bit of storyteller's voice that had crept into her tone. "Not in Archenland. But here I am in Calormene, and you asked me to guard you. Here you are, having convinced yourself that I am a hero, to be pampered and loved as well as any can be."

Before Lasaraleen knew what she was doing she had risen, buoyed on nothing but those words and for a moment hardly knowing what to do - but the words had also left her hands feeling empty, so she wrapped her arms around Aravis and clasped her hips on both sides. "Well! Yes. You are all that."

A quick hand sneaked up to one of her breasts, running a palm over the side, a knuckle over the nipple. Now she was buoyant and heavy at once.

Then a kiss against her temple. "I'm very happy that you think me a hero and warrior, Las, fanciful though it is. That it's not just peculiar Aravis, like when we were children, and even if it is mostly because of an adventure we had together and a story I wrote you in a letter. I'm happy that you still think it after the weeks that I've been living here."

Lasaraleen opened her mouth to speak, closed it, and then gently pulled away so that she could see Aravis's face first. "You could be more like this Corin you're always telling me about," she suggested. "Find yourself some fine beast to fight—"

There she stopped to grin at the expression on Aravis's face. It contorted into a new expression of distress as if another and equally awful aspect of the idea had come to her, and laughter bubbled out of Lasaraleen.

"Being Corin is the _last_ thing I would want to do!"

"Of course, my dear. I know. And you don't need to make up wild challenges to prove yourself. I do not know why you think you're not brave."

"It's not exactly that. I am quite sure I can be brave enough when the need comes. But I remember these scars more, lately, and they are a sign that I am not as honourable as I always liked to believe. That my pride was not deserved as I thought it was. Here, in the land of what was once my blood, my emperor, and my god, I remember that betrayal was an easy thing that I didn't even know I misunderstood."

Lasaraleen reached out to play with her hair, and was relieved that Aravis allowed it. "Are you afraid of betraying someone?"

"Perhaps I already have." She took Lasaraleen's hand between her own. "I believe I was right to leave Calormen. That might not mean that it was wrong to return, or that it would be right to leave again."

Oh, dear, Lasaraleen thought, it would be quite impractical if Aravis stayed. Even her husband's allowances might not quell gossip, and there were all the royal Northerners who were so fond of Aravis and not so fond of Calormen.

And Aravis might want to stay. She spoke of her time in Calormen as if she had been like the talking horses she escaped with, and it were captivity; and she felt as if she might want to stay here nonetheless.

This time Lasaraleen did not feel light. She wanted to lie down and stretch out and take in bared skin in the light, as Aravis had finally allowed her. "Darling, I always had meant to visit Archenland, I hope you know," she murmured, moving closer to Aravis. The words hardly seemed significant at the moment. "It would be expected besides my wanting to visit you - from my husband so that I might speak to the king on his behalf if he wished to find an unexpected place to avoid his enemies, from members of the nobility so that I might supposedly spy..."

She had successfully crowded Aravis flat on the marble, kneeling on hands and knees over her, but now she'd also brought them both to the very edge of the bath. "...on the barbarian North," Lasaraleen said, taking off the draped robes around her waist and putting it aside, and tipped herself into the water. She thought she caught a yell as if Aravis had been well-splashed.

It didn't stop Aravis from joining her seconds later, seeming twice as naked for how suddenly she was on Lasaraleen: muscled thigh between her own, hand dug into her loose plait, tongue in her mouth. Lasaraleen's thighs always felt twice as soft whenever she looked at Aravis's legs, and even more so when one of them was between hers, and now she felt so open and hot and soft all she could do was angle her hips to rub properly against the nub of nerves she wanted it most.

"I could give you new scars on your back!" she said.

Aravis might have smiled against her cheek. "Very funny."

"I'm serious," Lasaraleen said.

"Don't you dare, Las!"

Aravis's hands travelled in exploring clutches along Lasaraleen's body, probably to feel her wriggle more than anything else. Lasaraleen _was_ rubbing just right against her too, though, and Aravis's breath came in high-pitched hitches.

Lasaraleen floated on her and on the water, one hand trailing to feel the churn all around them. She shook off the lethargy, literally as a shiver run through her, and clutched Aravis's buttocks with both hands all down their curve, further down to right between her legs, and in with one finger from each hand. She stretched Aravis's entrance a little first, right at the edge, and felt like a bulwark against the force Aravis came forwards with. They bounced off the bottom of the bath; it was after all not deep. Lasaraleen laughed and pushed her fingers further in - and out, and in, and out...

Aravis did not play along at all, and left her to wriggle on her own. It _was_ nice, though. Lasaraleen did prefer it when Aravis grunted a desperate noise and ran parted lips down her shoulders, along her neck, close to as much of her breasts as she could reach - they shifted, and the avid mouth was able to close around one of her nipples. The sensation jumped from there to her legs, to her toes and her stomach, and Aravis quickly put a hand over her mouth to stop any noise the servants might be suspicious of - even as her own hips bucked and the rest of her rangy body went tense, and her face went slack and eyes hazy.

"You need not stay. You need not go." Lasaraleen felt herself surprised by how tightly she wrapped her arms around Aravis. "All the same, you know that I can count on you, and that you can count on me."

"I knew that years ago," Aravis said. "But now I know it better, and we have both made it truer over time." 


End file.
